In all of the holiday and work melee that has been going on around my house lately, I have been able to fit in a bit of sewing and knitting.  Hence, a finished quilt block.

The Star of Many Points.  Please forgive the badly lit photo; it’s been a little cloudy here today, which I love but is also makes it very hard to take good photographs.

In other news, Aaron’s sweater is almost done; I just need to buy a zipper online and sew it in.  The zig-zag quilt gets worked on in little bits and pieces.  I’ve finished sewing all the half-square triangles and am now sewing them into rows.  I’ve started my Christmas sewing, both the gifts I’m giving and the gifts others have asked me to make and will pay me for (why do I always think I’ll have more time than I do, why!?).  Oh, and I also still need to blog about my finished slouchy cardigan.  Don’t let me forget.

Finished postcard for a swap we’re doing in my hand quilting class.  It’s all hand sewn, appliqued, and embroidered, except for the edge stitch which I did on my machine.

Zig-zag quilt in progress.  I’ve actually taken all the squares down now and am marking them for sewing into half-square triangles.  Oh, and I did end up moving my flannel design wall.  It wasn’t working as part of the curtain set up, so I moved some bookcases around and stuck it next to my sewing machine.  It needs the hard surface of the wall behind it in order for the fabric to stick to it well, which is something I think I knew before I hung the flannel up as curtains but had temporarily blanked on.

Knit-wise, I’m still finishing up Aaron’s sweater and working on a sweater for myself that has been on the needles forever, but very little is getting done.  There just aren’t enough hours in my day right now to do the things I want to do and the things I have to or need to do.

6.  Camping.  Especially back home in Idaho this year with my family.  I like camping in California, too, it’s just not nearly as pretty and there are significantly more people.  We had the campground all to ourselves on this trip.

If you’ve never been camping, I highly recommend it.  Lots of fun, relaxing, and communing with nature.

See, my dad, communing with nature.  Always good animal antics while camping.

7.  The friend who gives me the little push I need to go to the gym.  Right now, I’m one of the skinniest out-of-shape people you’ll ever meet.  I miss living in Idaho where you have lots of outdoor chores and lots of good places to go on little hikes and walks to.  Now I have to actually work to stay in shape and I’m not very good at it.

8.  Beautiful sunsets and quick little anniversary vacations.

9.  Funny memories and the rare photo to remember them by.  My entire life someone has been pulling my ponytail.  I guess that’s why I keep growing it out and then cutting it off.  They also like to laugh at me on roller coasters.  Hey, I like to please.

10.  Ice cream.  Very, very grateful for ice cream.  I eat a lot of it.

11.  The good men and women serving in the Armed Forces.  Especially our friends Tyler and John.  Words cannot express how grateful I am to you.  And proud.  Very proud.

I was hoping Mary would do this again this year.  One thing I’m thankful for each day shouldn’t be too hard, right?  The only hard part is November is one of the busiest months of my year, which means very little blogging (usually).  I am grateful for so many things, though, and definitely need to put a voice to those thoughts.

Here’s my first five:

1.  I am SO grateful my husband is home after a longer than expected guys trip.  I was feeling pretty sad there towards the end.

2.  Good friends who read good books and then lend them to me.  Good book recommendations are always welcome, friend or not.

3.  Work.  Even though it means I’ll get very little of the things I want to done the next few months.

4.  Aaron’s work.  Hard economic times, everyone’s suffering, yada-yada-yada.  You know the drill and so do we.  We are both amazingly grateful and feel immensely blessed every time we pick up a new job, bring home another paycheck, and veg on the couch Sunday nights after a long week of work.  Even if things are a lot tighter than they were a year or too ago, we are just happy to be able to pay our bills.

5.  This year’s music link of choice: Pandora.  I’ve been listening to a steady stream of Cake radio for the last week or so.  Love it.

The last time I was in Idaho, my mom sent me home with my Christmas present early.

Three balls of Rambouillet/Columbia wool and a humongous skein of pure Rambouillet.  Both are undyed and 2-ply, and very, very squishy.

I love homegrown, rustic fibers.  I love the sheepy smell of the yarn and how when you squeeze it your hands come away all lanolin-y.  And, I love supporting small, indie farms, businesses, and designers.

Mom picked this up at our local farmer’s market from Jerry Lee Farm.  Great present, Mom.  Seriously great stuff.  Now I just have to figure out what to knit with it.  Any ideas?

Oh, and be sure to click on the link to the farm, if for no other reason than to be totally jealous of the type of setup I grew up on.

A project from a couple of months ago, but one I forgot to take pictures of before I gave it away.  Thanks Mindie for helping me out.

Blanket details:
Pattern:  Heart Blanket
Yarn:  Berroco Comfort in 9702 Pearl – 4 balls

Amidst all of the knitting I’ve been doing lately, I did manage to finish up the quilting on the Penn Dutch Tree block.  Only two more blocks left to go, one pieced and one appliqued, before I can start putting the quilt together.

Well, I didn’t end up getting Aaron’s sweater done before he left on his big guys’ trip, but I did manage to finish his hat.

I ended up doing a lot more knitting on this hat than was necessary.  I knit the whole thing according to the pattern then gave it to him to try on, which is when we found that his head was 3 inches bigger than the head size in the pattern.  So I ripped it all out.  Then I knit it again, this time modifying the pattern to accommodate his big head size, but I wasn’t quite sure how tall to knit it before decreasing and also how to add in the extra decreases caused by the extra cast on stitches.  So I winged it, modifying as I went the best I could and hoping for the best.  I had to rip out half the hat again and redo the decreases after it ended up looking like a hat for a conehead, but I eventually did get it all figured out.  I sewed in the brim piece (which was super fiddly) in time for our anniversary last week, two days before he left.

I knit like a madwoman on his sweater right up until he left but still wasn’t able to get it done.  I think I would have been able to finish if I would not have had to rip out the sleeves, twice.  I’m using Cascade 220, which has a slightly smaller gauge than the yarn called for in the pattern, plus I’m making some length and width modifications, so I’m having to do a lot of calculations and pattern adjustments.  That makes for a lot more chances to screw up, which I’ve done a couple of time.  Everything’s going fine now and I’ve finished the sleeves and today I joined them to the body piece.  Only about a ball and a half of knitting left to go.

Hat details:
Pattern:  Half-pipe hat (Ravelry link)
Yarn:  Cascade 220 in 9459 Yakima Heather (about half a ball) and 7824 Burnt Orange for trim

Liesl tagged me with a fun photo game.

Here’s the rules…
1. open your first photo folder
2. scroll to the 10th photo
3. post the photo on your blog and tell the story behind it
4. tag people to do the same

The first folder in my pictures folder is our wedding pictures (Aaron and Teresa’s Wedding – anything with Aaron’s name in it is at the top).  Number 10 is a photo of my husband’s family, after the ceremony, in front of the temple we got married in.  I can’t believe how different we all look now.  The family has grown to include two more in-laws, five nieces and a nephew on the way.

Our anniversary is next week and I’m proud to say we’ve made it eight years since that beautiful day.  It’s been a roller coaster ride (as all marriages are), but a good one.  I’m so happy I married that baby-faced man in the photo.

I’m going to tag my friends Ali and Rachel (if she’ll do it – she doesn’t usually put photos on her blog), because I really want to see what they pull out of their photo folders, and anyone else who wants to play along.

My creative space this week is my new design wall/curtains.

I took the doors off of the closet in my office/craft room soon after we moved in the house and have been meaning to make curtains for the opening ever since.  I don’t have a wall available to hang a piece of flannel on for a design board, so I decided to hang some inside of the curtains instead.  I attached the flannel at the top with decorator’s velcro, which is one piece of sticky back velcro and one piece of sew-in velcro.  The curtains are just basic undyed muslin which I plan on practicing my stenciling skills on later on.

Check out more creative spaces over at Kirsty’s.